In the third part of the VMWare vSphere 6 Data Protection series we will integrate the EMC virtual Data Domain with VMWare Data Protection. Post series: Part 1 – Deploy VDP Part 2 – Deploy virtual EMC Data Domain Part 3 – Integrate VDP with EMC Data Domain Configuration: First of all we have to login to the VDP Configuration Web Interface (not the one integrated in the VMWare Web Client). On the tab Storage we have to click “Add Data Domain” Enter the FQDN of the data domain system and enter the credentials of the previous created DD Boost User Enter the SNMP Community Finish – that´s it! Create a backup job: Connect to the vSphere Web Client Enter the VMWare Data Protection section and connect to the deployed VDP appliance Create a backup job and follow the wizard Gallery: How to create a backup job in the vSphere Web Client […]

In the second part of the VMWare vSphere 6 Data Protection series we will deploy the EMC virtual Data Domain. Post series: Part 1 – Deploy VDP Part 2 – Deploy virtual EMC Data Domain Part 3 – Integrate VDP with EMC Data Domain Introduction: What is EMC Data Domain? The EMC Data Domain is a PBBA, a purpose-built backup appliance. It has one primary task and that is to serve as backup appliance and deliver benefits in your backup environment as a backup to disk target. So what are the main benefits? Inline Deduplication: In a backup environment you backup the same data on a regular basis. With inline deduplication you save a lot of space on your appliance and even better: The more you backup the more you will save and will have a higher retention of your data. DD Boost: Even better inline deduplication is when the application/backup software […]

With vSphere 6 Data Protection all features from the previous vSphere 5.x vDPA were moved to the standard VDP without any additional costs. Post series: Part 1 – Deploy VDP Part 2 – Deploy virtual EMC Data Domain Part 3 – Integrate VDP with EMC Data Domain What’s more in the Advanced version and now with vSphere 6 available for everyone: Application-level replication Ability to expand current datastore Backup to a Data Domain Granular level restore of Microsoft Servers Automatic backup verification Application consistent backup support – guest-level backups and restores of Microsoft SQL Servers, Exchange Servers, and Share Point Servers, providing for application consistent backups of these servers. 8TB of deduplicated data for storage of backups (per appliance) Up to 400 VMs per VDP Advanced appliance Deployment: No surprise, the VDP Appliance comes in the form of an OVA template. As such the first step is to deploy this template. […]

Unfortunately my homelab got a little bit dusty in the last few months due to a lot of work and my recent move to Munich. But with the “new” release of vSphere 6 there was the perfect opportunity to get the homelab shiny again 😉 But first of all I had to tidy up my workroom and find a nice spot for my NUCs. ESXi 6.0 installation: The vSphere ESXi 6.0 installation worked as usual. Just like with vSphere 5.5 you had to inject the network driver to work with Intel NUCs – but no problems at this point. You can lookup the exact procedure in one of my former posts: Click me vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) 6.0 installation: With vSphere 6.0 a lot has changed with the vCenter architecture itself or let´s say got reorganized. With vSphere 5.x we were talking about vCenter Server, Inventory service and SSO. With […]

Recoverpoint for Virtual Machines will soon be available – but what is it doing? Protects at virtual machine level local or remote replication (sync/async) 100% software solution, no hardware appliance necessary VMWare vCenter integrated – all administrative tasks can be done from the VMWare admin Support for SAN/vSAN/NAS/DAS Recover to any point in time For those knowing EMC RecoverPoint – imagine the features of RecoverPoint as software-only solution and on a per-vm basis. For those not knowing EMC RecoverPoint – a small picture which shows how RecoverPoint delivers Continuous Data Protection And where does the magic happen? How does this work? Deployment of the recoverpoint appliances & installation of RecoverPoint IO splitters to the ESXi hosts via VIB File (next part of this series) The VMWare admin can protect a virtual machine via the WebClient through a wizard driven workflow When an IO is issued to a virtual machine […]

It is time to replace and rebuild my homelab and I will document these steps in different chapters. In part 2 I will talk about the vSphere basic environment installation. Part 1 – Hardware Part 2 – vSphere basic environment Creation of custom ESXi image: In order to get ESXi installed on the Intel NUC you have to create a customized image, because the necessary device driver for the Intel NUC network adapter (82579LM Gigabit Ethernet Controller) is not part of the ESXi base image. In order to create this image I was using the tool ESXi customizer from Andreas Peetz (www.v-front.de) in the past. The tool would still do the job (and would do it good!) but I wanted to try a new and more “onboard” way to customize the image with PowerCLI. What parts do you need? ESXi 5.5 Offline Image Powershell + VMWare PowerCLI installed Intel Driver Package for Intel […]

It is time to replace and rebuild my homelab and I will document these steps in different chapters. In part 1 I will talk about the hardware I will use for my homelab. Part 1 – Hardware Part 2 – vSphere basic environment Existing homelab components: HP NL54L Microserver (G7) HP ML 110 G6 Custom desktop PC Synology DS 209+II Assessment of existing homelab: Future homelab components: 2 x Intel® NUC-Kit DC53427HYE with 16 GB of RAM each HP NL54L Microserver (G7) … will be reused as backup server Synology DS 209+II … but there are plans to replace it with a newer and bigger box (upcoming chapter of this homelab series) Here you can find some additional information about Intel NUCs. With the new 4th generation you have additional support for a 2.5″ drive with the existing mSATA SSD. I was also thinking about taking three of these and create a VSAN/ScaleIO cluster […]